Jim Roe's Page

About Me

My amateur astronomy "career" began at age 19 when I met
a fellow student at the University of Oklahoma who was building a
telescope from scratch. He was grinding an 8-inch mirror in his home
in Norman, Oklahoma. I caught the bug and ordered a 6-inch kit from
Edmund Scientific. It took a while, but I finished that mirror and
subsequently another 6-in and a 12.5 in.

I sort of wandered in
the dark until I started work at the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation in
St. Louis in late 1965 where I found the McDonnell Amateur Astronomers
Club (since evolved into the Boeing Amateur Astronomers Club). There I
learned more and more astronomy, worked on those other telescopes
mentioned above, participated in club meetings, served as various
officers, etc. I have been an off and on member of the St. Louis
Astronomical Society over the years (much more steady lately).

I've
traveled to four total eclipses of the Sun (1972 in Nova Scotia, 1973
off the coast of Africa, 1979 near Winnepeg, Cananda and 2004 off the
coast of Turkey). I've completed several of the observing programs of
the Astronomical League and served at the Chairperson for the
Mid-States Region of the League three time (plus the current Chair
position).

In 1995, my wife Yvonne and I took on a missionary
assignment in Oaxaca, Mexico where I found my nights free and virtually
cloud-free. I had been intrigued by the advent of CCD cameras and
managed to find in the budget money for an SBIG ST-7. Of course, my
existing telescopes were inadequate so that started a tracking
telescope acquisition program that lea to an 8-inch Meade, followed by
a 10-in Meade LX-200 and (now) a 14-inch Celestron.

In Mexico, I
discovered the joy of searching for and finding asteroids with this
equipment. This was in the days before the "machines" monopolized the
discovery of new asteroids but from January 1998 through parts of 2003,
I discovered 102 asteroids from my little observatory in Oaxaca,
Mexico. The first one I got numbered I named "Oaxaca" in honor of the
state and city of discovery. Since then, I have named nine more
including rubyroe, yvonneroe, robertcox, dobson, pulgaril, melbartels,
sooner.

Since leaving Mexico asteroid observing is much more
difficult and I have switched to variable star observing using my
10-inch (since retired), the 12-inch and the 32-inch AfA telescope. In
2008 I submitted some 25,000 high quality measurements to the
International DataBase of the ASVSO. I've also measured many
transiting exo-planets.

Also, since leaving Mexico, I've founded
the Alliance for Astronomy, Inc. which is a Missouri non-profit corporation with the mission of promoting education, awareness and
appreciation of astronomy and related sciences. In February 2005, the
AfA founded the Astronomical Society of Eastern Missouri as its chief
outreach activity.

This
is me with the 32-inch reflector owned by the Alliance for Astronomy.
I have put a lot of time into getting this scope in first-class
condition (and there is still a way to go!). The telescope was
designed and built by Al Kelly and Andy Saulitis and used in Texas.
The Alliance was able to buy the telescope with the proceeds of a cash
grant from the Boeing Employees Community Fund of St. Louis.

In
the form we took delivery of the scope it had a friction drive with
tracking motors (steppers) and electric clutches. The scope had to be
pushed to a target (with the clutches released), then the clutches
would be engaged and it would track well enough for visual use and
short exposures. But I wanted it to be a "Go-To" telescope.

To that end, I installed a servomotor system from Sidereal Technology, Inc.
Two servo motors replaced the stepper motors simply and the controller
provides the management of them. Subsequent changes have been to
eliminate one stage of the friction drive with a toothed belt drive and
an additional 5:1 step down coupling using a toothed belt drive for
that too.

There is still slippage in the main friction drives
which makes it impossible to achieve a truly valid mount model and to
be able to track for more than 20 seconds or so in long exposures. I
have plans to add direct drive to both axes - again with toothed belts
and to add high resolution encoders on the telescope axes to get
greater precision in pointing and tracking.

Nevertheless, the
telescope is capable of pointing within 10s of arc minutes anywhere in
the sky. A quick calibration exposure is analyzed using the program
Elbrus, the scope is updated to its true position and a subsequent slew
usually lands the target right near the center of the FOV (using an
SBIG STL-1001 camera with 23.5x23.5 arc min FOV).

Recent additions

Venus Transit 2012My "new" solar scope featuring my old (very) 3-in refractor outfitted with a Sun Funnel acquitted itself well during the transit of Venus across the Sun on June 5 ...
Posted Jun 6, 2012, 1:15 PM by James Roe

New Sun Scope from OldI bought my first telescope in 1964 - a three-inch f/15 refractor from Edmund Scientific for $125. I used it until I was able to afford bigger and bigger ...
Posted May 9, 2012, 2:38 PM by James Roe

New observatory in Bourbon, MissouriA large part of the motivation to move to a 4.5 acre site near Bourbon, Missouri was to create and have my personal observatory in my back yard for ...
Posted May 9, 2012, 3:28 PM by James Roe

Bahtinov Focusing MaskFocusing a telescope when trying to image the Moon and/or planets can be difficult. The Bahtinov mask is a funny looking device that makes the task more objective than ...
Posted Aug 13, 2010, 11:18 AM by James Roe

Musings on Barlow Lenses and How to Use ThemBarlow lenses are common "tools" in the amateur kit, used to increase the magnification of regular eyepieces. The theory is relatively simple but the practical uses are sometimes not what ...
Posted Jun 24, 2010, 9:55 AM by James Roe